Category Archives: Op-Ed

Sarah Palin‘s column today in the Washington Postcalling for President Obama to boycott the Copenhagen summit is pure malarkey. Which is why the Post was absolutely right to print it.

Those who are claiming that the column was factually inaccurate miss the point. Since when has anything that Palin ever said been accurate? It’s like accusing Sarah Silverman of failing to be serious or Hugh Hefner of being promiscuous.

Palin isn’t interested in accuracy, but causing a stir and, above all, positioning herself as a serious candidate for the GOP’s nomination in 2012, which keeps moving to the right, partly in response to Palin and partly because Palin is responding to it. So far, she’s done an excellent job of trying to establish herself as a major voice in the party. Now she needs to tackle policy, and she’s doing it.

Her column epitomizes conservative conspiracy thinking and ventilates her views rather deftly (does anyone think that Palin actually wrote it?). It accuses a cabal of radical scientists of pushing alarmism about global warming. To be sure, Palin, in order to give her views a veneer of sobriety, concedes that warming is actually taking place, just that it can’t be pinned on humans. How come conservatives, who are always stressing individual moral responsibility, suddenly abdicate it when it comes to global warming?

Based on recent comments from her father, it appears that Asian Americans are partly responsible for Sarah Palin‘s spotty undergraduate career. Palin’s father suggested that she left her first school in Hawaii, ultimately attending four different colleges before graduating, because there were too many Asians in the tropical paradise. Which made her uncomfortable. Apparently, Palin felt much more comfortable studying in Idaho.

Learning this about Palin doesn’t surprise me in the least. Maybe she couldn’t make out all those Asian Americans in Hawaii from looking outside her window in Alaska.

Is Sarah Palin truly the best our country has to offer as a future world leader and president of the United States of America?

The temperature was close to zero Monday as I left the house to buy Sarah Palin‘s memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” The book was almost impossible to find in Anchorage before its official release Tuesday. The salesman who finally sold me one asked me to promise I wouldn’t reveal his identity if he sold me a pre-publication copy.

I made the pledge and put down my money. I’ve written about Palin since she ran for governor in 2006, interviewed her, moderated campaign debates in which she participated. I wanted to see what she’s like in prose.

In “Advertisements for Myself,” Norman Mailer admitted “a desire to inflict my casual opinions on a half-captive audience.” That’s what Palin has done in her 400-plus-page advertisement for a woman who, at age 45, seems to have permanently attached the word former to her name — former beauty queen, former mayor of Wasilla, former governor of Alaska, former Republican vice presidential nominee.

Palin is now beginning a book tour on which she will do what she does best: draw crowds, create controversy and stir up the conservative base. These things are almost certain to make her, like Mailer, a bestselling author. But they won’t make her the next president of the United States.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Palin, an amateur as a candidate, became a professional victim, blaming others when encountering political turbulence.

Maybe in their business lives, conservatives are the stern, unforgiving masters of capitalist lore. But when it comes to politics, oh, do they love a whiner!

It is her mastery of the lament that explained former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin‘s appeal last year, and now her knack for self-pity is on full display in her book, “Going Rogue.” This is the memoir as prolonged, keening wail, larded with petty vindictiveness. With an impressive attention to detail, Ms. Palin settles every score, answers every criticism; locates a scapegoat for every foul-up, and fastens an insult on every critic, down to the last obscure Palin-doubter back in Alaska.

From Ms. Palin’s masterwork, we learn that the personal really is the political. Every encounter with a critic seems to be a skirmish in the culture wars, from the Alaska debate moderator who didn’t play fair once to the “wealthy, effete young chap” who ran against her for governor but who, in one of the quickest transitions from anti-snob to snob in all of literature, is also said to have served as “our limo driver at [her husband] Todd’s cousin’s wedding.”

The most exciting event of our time is coming and I can hardly wait. The day everyone has been waiting for will be here on Nov. 17. Going Rogue, Sarah Palin’s great American novel will finally arrive! Bring out the champagne. Let’s all have a book party. This is THE event of the century.

Even before the first copy is released, Going Rogue is outselling other women of equal intellect and accomplishments. A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton is down in the numbers . Palin is way ahead of The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice, by Sandra Dey O’Connor. Not even that amazingly accomplished Paris Hilton: Life on the Edge, can match Palin’s literary success.

Here she is, folks. The Lady of the Year, the Maverick to end all Maverick’s, the new leader of the Republican Party in skirts. What a woman! What an amazing role model for all ambitious young women everywhere . Especially those who want to rise to fame and fortune based on their charm and their wit, and their ability to manipulate the conservative right like nothing ever before.

Let’s all hail the almighty Palin. Parodied by Tina Fey, ridiculed by those nasty men in the media, insulted by none other than David Letterman and not once did she ever lose sight of her number 1 goal:

On the Early Show this morning CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer, in an interview with Harry Smith, stated he doesn’t see any political future for former Alaska governor Sarah Palin … “it’s kind of like a baseball player going into a slump and blaming … the bat boy.” Bob Schieffer’s guess is that Palin is never going to run for anything again. After leaving the governor’s office in Alaska because that was too much for her, Schieffer continued “can you imagine her going through a primary with an opponent? What would she say, when the going gets tough, I’m ready to quit.” Harry Smith can be heard laughing off camera.

Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman appeared with former Governor Sarah Palin on Septmber 22, 2008 in Media, Pennsylvania.

Senator Joe Lieberman was on Fox News Sunday this week speaking on the Ft. Hood tragedy proclaiming his committee was going to “investigate” what he believes is “the most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11.” So, instead of what would usually and regretfully be called a “fragging” or “friendly fire” or some other euphemism, Lieberman used the Republican Party line to define our two wars as Holy Wars. Any act by a Muslim is a terrorist act. We are in a crusade against evil. Therefore Muslims are evil. We’re good, they’re bad.

Then the Senator from the great state of Connecticut is asked about the Health Care Reform bill. Lieberman brushes up against yet another GOP talking point and says, “The public option plan is unnecessary. It has been put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance.” Government takeover of health care. Raise taxes. More debt. You lie.

As I was watching the interview, I thought to myself, ”Wow this schmuck came dangerously close to being one heartbeat away from the presidency.”